42. I…Promise?
Chapter 42
I…Promise?
The Host
Four Months Ago
“ E xcellent job! They loved you! Calling the players lovelies? Acting unhinged and chaotic? It was the showmanship your predecessor was missing,” Harold exclaimed as The Host entered his office.
The Host had just, well…Hosted his very first game.
It was one for the rest of the world.
He inclined his head, the collar still weighing heavily around his neck. It hadn’t been removed since he had put it on all those months ago, and the skin beneath it was chafed and raw. In the beginning it had bothered him, but now he accepted it as a reminder of who he was .
“Thank you,” he replied before his attention fell to the woman in the chair across from Harold.
“Our dear Ana has finally made it back here. She even found the champion that I will be Sponsoring this year. I am quite excited to have him.” Harold dropped four files onto the desk.
The Host could only make out the top man’s name.
Levi.
He recognized it. Nightingale had spoken her piece on how the man had betrayed someone in the Factions.
“That man isn’t in a Government prison.”
Harold beamed up at The Host. “That’s correct. Here, take these files, read up on these contestants. We just got word the last one we needed has been spotted so we should have them just in time. Ana, go ahead and join him, he’s going to have questions. He always does.”
“Yes sir,” Nightingale spoke softly, demurely.
It was at odds with her usual cockiness.
Nightingale stood to join The Host, but Harold clicked his teeth. “Aren’t you forgetting something?”
Nightingale giggled. “Not at all.” She walked around the desk before placing a chaste kiss to the man’s lips.
The Host had to contain his disgust. It was exactly as he had guessed.
How long has she been forced to suffer through this? How long has Harold had this connection to Nightingale?
“That’s a good dear.” Harold spanked her as she turned to The Host.
From this angle, only The Host could see the anger, the distress, the shame that washed across Nightingale’s features.
For one singular moment, The Host empathized with the woman. On what she must have endured.
But then he remembered what she had done to Raven .
“Come on,” Nightingale whispered as she took hold of his arm, dragging him out of the room.
“Where have you—”
Nightingale cut him off. “Not here. Wait until we get to your room. I see they collared you now.”
The Host didn’t speak again until they had taken the halls and the stairs to his home. He had graduated from a Game Warden’s apartment to a Host’s luxury penthouse. It was the one shining positive in all the fuckery that had occurred since he took this position. He was no longer underground, and when they made it inside his newest home, his attention went immediately towards the windows. To the stars that twinkled in the sky. To the full moon that shone across the tumultuous ocean.
Nightingale slammed the door shut and turned towards him. “It’s time. This will be the last game. There are too many variables to control, we need to place someone inside the game this year.”
The Host’s heart rattled around his rib cage as he twisted to the woman. She looked…better in some ways and worse in others. She was no longer bandaged, but now her eyes were sunken in, listless.
He calmed his emotions, forcing them deep down into the recesses of himself. Burying them as forcefully as he could manage. If his anxiety spiked, he would be drugged. He didn’t have time for that.
“So you say.” The Host strode to the leather chair in the center of the room, settling onto it as he perused the first file lackadaisically. It was his job to know everything about each of the contestants.
“What have they done to you?” Nightingale stomped further into the room, standing right before him. “Where is your heart? Your anger? Your pure unfiltered hatred of me?” she demanded. “I leave you a man and come back to a doll!”
The Host dropped the top folder onto the table next to him, not looking up. “No, you left me as a Game Warden and you came back to The Host. Just as you requested.” Flipping through the new file, his eyebrows raised. “Triplets?”
“Not any longer.” Nightingale continued boring holes into him, but he ignored it. “The bottom file might knock some emotion into you.”
She ripped the rest of them from his hands, leaving only one.
Jayce.
For a split second, his feelings spiked, but he swallowed them down, loosening his grip on the folder.
“He’s sponsoring his own adoptive son? Won’t they think that’s unfair? Surely the other Sponsors will riot.” The Host flipped it open, reading through the information.
Does Jayce even know he’s a father? Or that Raven’s alive?
“It seems you’re still just as scheming as ever. Is there anything else you need from me?” The Host didn’t look up. He was exhausted. A bone deep, painfully unfixable exhaustion. He had been for years, but it was catching up to him fast and quick.
“What about Sparrow? Is she okay?” Nightingale questioned gently.
The Host jumped to his feet, his hand raised up on its own and he wrapped his fingers around Nightingale’s neck. “She nearly died. You could have warned me. She’s a child, an innocent.” Even with his physical show of anger, his voice remained level, calm.
“There’s the Julian I remember. Always concerned about the weak, those that can’t fight back.”
The Host dropped his hold on the woman, twisting away from her. “Leave. I don’t have the energy to deal with you right now. The next game is coming sooner than the last. Only three months for me to prepare. I can’t be around Sparrow right now, I don’t have the ability to go into the role as her uncle.”
“There are going to be 250 players and 5 winners this year,” Nightingale apprised him.
The Host froze. “Understood, I imagine I will be getting quite a few of their files nearer to the game.”
“You will. There are going to be a few more that you… recognize . When you see them, I think you will understand what I am trying to tell you. But Julian, this is going to be the last year of this game.”
The Host turned to watch Nightingale. Before he had thought her all powerful, evil, larger than life. But now he recognized her for what she was. A broken woman that had been beaten, abused, and used for years. Her childhood torn to shreds; her innocence stolen too soon. Pity wormed its way into his heart for her, but it did nothing to change how he regarded Nightingale.
“Anadil, it’s time to accept we are never going to leave here. There isn’t a possibility in hell that they will ever let us escape. That the other countries will ever care enough to put a stop to these games.”
“Oh sweet, idiotic Julian. You haven’t changed after all. I believe Mr. Roger has clued you in a bit more on how the rest of the world operates.”
The Host didn’t respond, instead watching the woman’s face with a critical intensity. Searching for something . But he wasn’t quite sure what exactly.
“It may not be the same in Violencia, but the rest of the world considers mothers to be sacred . Cherished. What do you think would happen if a mother ended up in this game?”
The Host furrowed his brow in confusion before he slowly worked out his own thoughts. It was harder now to convey them. His mind was such a slushy of uppers and downers that he had half-forgotten about his identity outside of here. “It wouldn’t be good,” he finally settled on.
Nightingale straightened, sweeping her dark, raven-black hair behind her. “Now hold onto that thought. We’ll circle back to it later.” She cast a look around his space. The stark possessions, the lack of any personal items. “This isn’t who you are, Julian. Underneath all of this, the facade, the blank empty canvas you’re trying to project, I know there is a good man. One that loves and cares about those close to him. One that risks everything for others. It won’t be too much longer now, all of this suffering will be worth it. I promise.”
I…promise?
Why did those two words hit The Host harder than anything she had said prior?
He brought a hand up to his chest, his nails digging into the fabric there, his mind wavering with who he once was and who this world had made him to be. He wanted more than anything to be the na?ve boy that didn’t know the disgusting nature of it all.
He longed for the ability to rewrite his story.
“You need to leave.” The words came from his mouth, but they didn’t sound like him. They were broken lyrics to a song he had never written or heard before.
“Oh Julian, I’m so sorry. I didn’t know about the collars. But it won’t be much longer now.”
“Leave!” he belted out as he fell to his knees. A prick on his neck was indication that his heart rate had spiked too high. A drug was entering his system.
“What is this? What are they doing to you?”
A downer .
“Leave please.” He wanted to sob and wail as his body was no longer his own. His limbs went numb. He slumped to the floor, face turned to the side.
This time he heard the unmistakable noise as she walked away from him. Leaving him to his own despair. His loneliness. Just him, inside a muddled mind.
This was why he couldn’t feel. This was why he needed to control his emotions. He couldn’t keep going through this cycle of numbness and adrenaline.
He didn’t feel like this body was his any longer. He had effectively become a complete puppet. They didn’t only pull his strings, they also controlled the stuffing. Every single piece inside of him was no longer his.
It was the Creator’s.
It was the Sponsor’s.
It was this god-forsaken game’s.
All he could do was think back to the memories of a time much brighter than now. Of a doe eyed woman with vivid blue eyes and dark charcoal hair. Of how she had kept him alive.
Of how her daughter was now doing the same. He loved Sparrow with his entire heart, cared for the girl more than he should, and would do anything to keep her safe. In his mind, Sparrow was his child. He had been there for all of her firsts, watched as the doctor had delivered her, held her in his arms as she cried for the very first time.
But even still, it was Raven that was his very last tether to humanity. To sanity. To this earthly plane.
And he missed Raven. He missed Raven so fucking much. But he wasn’t the same man she knew, he was a broken creature. And beneath everything, he was terrified . Scared that even if they were reunited, she wouldn’t recognize him. That she wouldn’t forgive him for all that he had done in their time apart.
His vision twisted as he was moved, rearranged. And now he stared into those familiar eyes. His mind was too foggy to comprehend they might not be Raven’s.
“I’m so sorry.” The distant, broken sob cut into him, but he couldn’t discern if they were reality or a delusion that he had cooked up. “I never meant for any of this to happen.”
He wanted to comfort the crying woman, but the drug had run its course.
Too much and too fast.
The vines of unconsciousness pulled him fully under.